


Make It Stick

by SenkoWakimarin



Series: In Times of War [4]
Category: Cable and Deadpool
Genre: Blood and Injury, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Isolation, M/M, Torture, Wade Wilson Breaking the Fourth Wall, Wade Wilson Dies Several Times
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-07 15:36:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 14,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18876100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin
Summary: We all know where this is going.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm begging you to please read the tags before reading the fic.

We all know how this story ends. 

Just like we all know how we  _ want _ it to end. We know what our bones and our guts tell us is how it  _ should _ end. We tell ourselves it might be different this time. Justice exists, surely it will be served. 

But we’re all grown ups now. 

And we’ve all read the comic books, right?

 

-*-

It takes some time, getting things to come together. Wade’s okay with that; he’s got, it seems, nothing  _ but _ time. 

Hilariously, it’s Nate who puts the vague idea into his head. Another bloody room, another agonizing punishment after another failed escape, looking him in the eye as Wade shakes his way through the kind of pain that turns most people into a jibbering mess. Wade’s arms are bound, his left leg his either broken or damn close, and he’s lost so much blood it’s a wonder he’s even conscious. His jaw, dislocated, is the most nagging point of pain, maybe because it’s the injury he keeps aggravating, trying to talk.

“Maybe I should leave you here like this,” Nate says, nose wrinkled and lip curled in disgust. That’s fair, Wade’s not in great shape. He’s pretty sure some of his internals are presently externals, and that’s generally not a great look for anybody. “Leave you chained, unleash you only when I want you, treat you like the pet you are. Maybe that would make it stick.”

Make it stick.

Nothing ever sticks. Healing factor, crazy brain; it’s like he’s double Teflon-coated. It all slides off. 

Nate leaves him to think about it. He comes back sometime later, when the tips of Wade’s fingers have gone bloodless and his arms are all but useless; he releases him and carries him, half conscious, into the shower. Wade knows that when they leave the bathroom, the bed will be clean, the nasty stink associated with leaving a gravely wounded man chained and alone for days on end all aired out.

It’ll all be fresh and clean and new, because it’s like cleaning an animal’s cage. Nate’s just a guy with a really fucked up pet, Wade thinks; a fucked up pet who keeps shitting on the rug and getting his nose rubbed in it but just can’t seem to stop. Who’s more fucked up, the pet who keeps getting punished or the keeper who won’t give up on a bad job.

They just need to make it stick. One way or another. Because like this, god, like this it’s just another god awful cycle, ugly and unstoppable as the rise and set of the sun.

He thinks about it for a long time, after Nate’s finished playing nice, if you can call dumping Wade in the shower stall and scrubbing him down with thorough intent nice. He thinks about pain and the fucked up way Nate’s taught him to love it in the last few years. He thinks about Nate taking nos for yeses, about pretending to want to get away, about how escape is only rewarded when he’s running into Nate’s arms. 

It’s okay to pretend to want to get away, but if he means it even a little, it’ll cost him blood. 

And sometimes, laying alone in his big bed, with its sturdy metal frame and the chains and leather cuffs hanging from the headboard; sometimes laying there, he thinks about a different Nate, one with gentle eyes and soft hands, who looked at him and said he’d do anything he could to help.

Hallucination, misplaced memory, wishful thinking, it doesn’t really matter. Bearded Nate with his sad eyes and wistful words was never coming back. For that matter, neither was the short version, who could probably give War a run for his money in the mean department if nothing else. 

Wade is on his own. Wade and his healing factor.

Trying to make something stick.


	2. Chapter 2

There are a lot of ways to twist any situation, to frame an action and call it justice. Villains are decided by history, and they’re usually not the ones left alive to write the narrative. Rare is the man who will label himself evil. 

And of course, there’s always the poetic definition of justice. 

Maybe that’s what this is.

Poetry.

Poets love miserable shit.

-*-

Sometimes, if he stops eating and gives in to the depressive’s desire to just be still and quiet, he sleeps for long, drawn out periods. No dreams, no thinking, no worrying. He doesn’t do this often because going that deep into his own head when trapped somewhere like this goes against every survival instinct, and a significant portion of Wade, regardless of mental health, quite badly wants to stay alive. 

He knows for a fact he can’t starve himself to death. Been there, tried that, he always pulls through. 

It’s still something, flattering or frustrating, when he wakes up to find Nate sitting on the end of his bed. One of Nate’s hands is on the curve of Wade’s calve, not squeezing or clutching or trying to hurt. It’s just there, gentle pressure, and Wade’s not really sure what he’s meant to feel about that.

Nate is facing away from him, silver hair combed neatly back, idiotic armor covering him in case, Wade supposes, he decided to try getting violent. It’s been a while since he tried that with any sincerity; there really isn’t a chance in hell of Wade overpowering Nate without a weapon. A real weapon, not something repurposed. Though it  _ would _ be funny to kill Mr. Sadist with a table lamp.

“It smells like you haven’t moved since I was here last,” Nate says finally. “The food stores haven’t changed, except for to spoil. Please tell me you were at least getting up to use the toilet.”

Pressing his face against the pillow, turning just slightly away, so he doesn’t have to look at Nate anymore, Wade gives a tired laugh. “I never did see a yellow bandanna on you. This too much of a turn off? I figured with the mutilation and all there were no more hard nos.”

“Get up. You need to eat something.”

“Uh, pass. But the pretending to care is a cute new look.”

The hand on his leg tightens, hard, bruising. Wade hisses through his teeth but otherwise doesn’t move. 

“You think if I didn’t care, I would waste time and resources keeping you here?” Nate snarls. It’s kind of funny, how offended he sounds, like Wade’s being an idiot for having missed all the obvious signs of his affection, and Wade finds himself laughing again.

“Oh, so kidnapping, isolation, and regularly beating the shit out of me is a love language now.”

An ugly, desperate noise leaves him when Nate really digs in, fingers biting hard enough into the bunched muscle at the back of Wade’s leg that something crunches. “I brought you  _ home _ . Somewhere safe where I can keep track of you in a world where nothing else is stable. All you do is throw it in my face, an ungrateful, mouthy brat to the end.”

“ _ Is _ there an end, Nate?” Wade snaps, doing his best now to pull away. It’s hard, after so long of not moving around much, but not as hard as it would be if it weren’t for that pesky healing factor. He’s tired, and sore, and yeah, as he moves, the smell really is  _ something _ , but he’s nowhere nearer death than he was when Nate had deposited him on the bed after his forced shower. 

He manages to extract himself and is trying to turn over when Nate grabs him by the ankle and, barely showing any effort, drags him bodily out of the bed, throwing him on the floor. He can feel the carpet bite into his bare skin, burning, maybe even bloodying. With Nate standing over him, looking like the devil himself with the ceiling lights backing him, he feels an old shiver of anticipation, not exactly fear, not exactly arousal, but somewhere between the two. 

And he hates it. He hates how eager he is to fight and fuck this man. He hates himself for not being able to hate  _ Nate _ . 

“Get up. Wash yourself. Eat something. Defiantly rotting in your bed serves no one.”

Wade makes himself sneer. “What, the new look a turn off? Too gross for War? Not a sexy enough show of how much I hate this place?”

It’s not all together a surprise to be hauled up into the air, held up and immobilized so Nate can take a couple steps closer. The telekinesis prying at his mouth is more a shock, and Wade tries, really puts effort, into defying that force, but when his mouth starts filling with blood, it rapidly becomes a case of spit or choke and Wade’s not going to give Nate the satisfaction of watching him choke on his own blood.

Spitting blood at the bastard goes about as well as he’d expected, pretty red droplets caught and suspended in air inches from Nate’s smug face. It’s hard to spit when your tongue is being ripped out and Wade doesn’t bother with a second attempt, despite his mouth being almost immediately flooded with blood again; he feels his tongue go with one last rough tug of TK and just lets the gout of blood and saliva run over his lips and down his chin. 

The blood held suspended drops, splattering the floor like a gory spring shower as Nate steps in real close. Wade thinks about spitting again, catching the bastard off guard, maybe getting some of the blood in Nate’s mouth, but he finds himself again held too still to do more than bleed, breath, and blink. 

“There you are,” Nate says, pleased and patronizing. “You really are the perfect pet, aren’t you? I can do whatever I want to you and the next time I come by you’re perfectly whole again. Is that what you want, Wade; you want to goad me into playing with you today?”

Wade coughs, tries to swallow, chokes on the thick bitterness of his own blood. It’s not really a feeling he could ever seem to get used to, the weight of his tongue heavy and dead against his teeth, just meat, disconnected and useless. Nate makes a pitying face, croons a mock-soothing noise, and with a gesture Wade’s severed tongue (and a good deal of blood) flies from his mouth. 

It shouldn’t excite him. He’s fucked up but he’s not fucked up enough yet to know that this is beyond what should get anybody’s motor running. The fact that his dick is pulsing, half hard and getting harder, suffuses him with shame and a kind of self-loathing that’s not very sexy at all. His body is so eager for anything Nate -- War -- wants to give him, it doesn’t much matter anymore if he has a different mental opinion.

And it’s easier, isn’t it? Easier just to give in, just to decide to want what he can have instead of claw and bite and struggle for what’s not even possible anymore. Nate might have loved him once upon a time, but like the little Fallout mascot says,  _ ain’t like that now _ . 

Now Nate holds him caught up in his telekinetic grip, ruthless and precise; his hand when it comes to rest on Wade’s cheek is comparatively gentle, warm and careful. It would be a nice kiss if it weren’t for the way Nate’s tongue pushes blood and spit down Wade’s throat, if it weren’t for all the pain, if it weren’t for the fact that he isn’t allowed even the barest measure of control. 

When he pulls away, there’s blood and spit smeared over Nate’s lips and chin, and he doesn’t move to wipe it away. His eyes, half lidded and bright, watch Wade's face, like he's studying him, expecting something. Wade can't imagine what it is he expects to see, when he's got Wade frozen like this. His mouth hurts, the stump of his severed tongue tingles and aches, healing factor already at work.

But he hasn't eaten in a while. Hasn't really done much to care for himself at all. He doesn't know the exact science behind his healing factor, but it always seems that if he's underfed or not really into the whole idea of healing, it tends to take longer. 

"Poor Wade," Nate mocks, patting the side of his neck. "I just don't have time for a real play date today. And I have no interest in playing with you when you smell like you've been rolling in shit. You want me, then be ready for me when I come back."

He steps back, eyebrows drawn up, eyes keen on Wade, who can only stand there and bleed, trapped. After a few beats of silence, broken only by the weak gasping noises Wade can't quite stop himself from making, constantly on the verge of aspirating his own blood, Nate cocks his head to one side, lifting his fingers to his ear as if straining to hear.

"No complaints, no arguing," he says, seeming to relish it. "Music to my ears. Now get yourself cleaned up, Wade. You never know; I might be ready to play tonight, if you've been good."

Just like that, the telekinesis evaporates. It's like stepping out of the shower and into the most arid of deserts, something soaking tight to his ruined skin steadily and rapidly depleting into nothing, not gone all at once, almost like it wants to linger. It shames him, that he still wishes any part of Nate would want to linger.

A few years ago, he would have thrown himself at War, would have fought, naked and stinking and tongueless or no. And before that, between their divorce and the dawn of Apocalypse's reign, he'd have let Nate rip him to pieces before he'd dully allow himself to be treated like this, like a misbehaving pet that needs to be punished, needs to be bullied into behaving. 

He knows he should fight. He should be angry. Part of him is, part of him is livid, raging at the amused, detached disdain Nate shows him. Part of him knows the metal base of the lamp by the bed is hefty enough to do some damage, can calculate exactly the angle to jump the twist and flip to land by the table, the force with which he'd have to swing the lamp to do any damage. War, after all, might wear his armor here, but he rarely wears the helm. 

Mostly, though, he hurts. He hurts in every way he thinks it's possible to hurt, and if he were any less of a tough, manly man, he might cry, Nate standing here watching or not. He wonders idly what Nate would do if he did start crying. Hit him? Laugh? Would he just walk out and leave him to his misery, not understanding or caring or wanting to be able to do either?

Wade doesn't know. All he does is glare, working earnestly at breathing evenly, at keeping the tears away, at settling his pulse. Thankfully, when Nate stops touching him, the bitter, squirming sense of arousal dissolves into nothing but a shameful memory. 

"Clean up, Wade, and I'll bring you a treat tonight."

He says it like a promise, like a treat from him now will be like a treat would have been in the Providence days, when fucking each other might come with pain, with a little bruising or bloodshed, but the terms were even, the power balanced, and the wounds rarely lethal. He says it like he might mean a special dinner or a secret present, something Wade would want.

But a treat is just another threat. 

He huffs a little laugh and shakes his head; there's a joke there about treats and threats and spelling, but he can't quite make it work. 

It's a shock when Nate's hand brushes against along his jaw, leaning back into his space. Wade's caught between jerking away, hitting him, and leaning in too, and that leaves him awkwardly still as War brushes their mouths together. His mouth is still bloody and he still hurts, but this kiss is gentle and soft and brief.

"I'll see you later," Nate promises, and leaves, like there's no concern here, no need to worry that Wade will disobey.

And the worst of it is, he won't.


	3. Chapter 3

Since we all know what’s going to happen, the real question becomes, why are we still reading? Why don’t we pitch the book? Click out of the tab? Why do we persist in something we know is going to end to our dissatisfaction?

Maybe because that’s life. 

It can’t all be sugar-sweet comfort and one-off orgasms that then fade to black.

Sometimes we want a real ending.

-*-

Nate didn't come back that night. Wade showered and microwaved something that felt like instant oatmeal but tasted like ash. He doesn't think about it. He just eats what he's got that's not spoiled -- a lot of the stuff in his dingy little kitchen is past what even he's willing to eat, food waste that should make him guilty since he knows out there in the real world things like milk and eggs aren't exactly stocked on grocery store shelves anymore. 

He can't feel guilty about the food. He can feel guilty about a lot of things, but the food -- no, no, that's not on him. That's symptomatic of a problem that goes bigger and deeper than his sphere of influence, too big and too deep to even think about, really. He eats his glop and watches the shitty static-riddled television and lets himself forget as best as he can, why he doesn't go out. Why he can't.

Television plays reruns; he yammers at it, lounging back in a couch that feels exactly like a shitty one he'd had years and years ago in New York. When the reruns give way to infomercials, he gives a half-hearted attempt at channel surfing, unsure what he'd want, before giving it up as a bad job. 

The bed still reeks. Badly. He elects not to think about it, sleeps on the couch. It's not exactly a new experience. 

Routine is supposed to help, but it's hard to have a routine in a cell you're not allowed to leave and with no other company but the voices in your head. You run out of things to do, even if you're crazy and have 850 square feet to dick around in. Wade spends the second day since Nate's last visit clearing rotten food out of his fridge, stripping ruined blankets off of his bed, trying to figure out how to get that kind of mess out of the mattress before giving up and throwing his back out for fifteen minutes just flipping the goddamn thing. 

He's sweaty and disgusting and he wishes he had a match so he could burn the sheets because they're absolutely a lost cause, but the end result has him tired enough to not be thinking about the reality of his circumstance. He's not quite back to believing he's settled in the foggy early 00s waiting for a mysterious caller to hire Deadpool, but he's too tired to be worried about where Nate is or how he should be trying to escape. He just wants to clean the slick of sweat off, throw down new sheets, or a towel if he hasn't got a second set of sheets -- he hasn't looked yet, doesn't super care -- and maybe jack off a bit before passing out.

It's been a long last few lives, he thinks; he's earned this. 

Day three he wakes up with his head propped in someone's lap, fingers tracing roughly over the snarl of scar tissue clotting the side of his neck just under his ear.

Nate. 

Nate not wearing armor. Gently touching. His heart does something funny and gross, a giddy surge of traitorous delight and hope, so when he opens his eyes and sees the same cool, calculating look in those mismatched ones, it's like being punched in the gut. 

"You should really grow that beard," he says around a yawn, reaching up to trail his fingers over a smooth, strong jaw. He's a little surprised Nate allows it, but smiles anyway, like he expects exactly this. "Really help push that fantasy for me. Maybe a plaid shirt. Carry a hatchet."

To his surprise, Nate actually chuckles. "When did you develop a lumberjack fetish?"

"When bearded alternate timeline you fisted me and called me a good boy," Wade says smartly, pushing just to see how far he's allowed. "Plus the Brawny Man was always a MILF."

"Mother...?"

"Mascot."

It feels weird, laying on his back, looking up at Nate in casual wear, lighting soft, the hand on him just still and gentle. It's too much like old times, except back then Nate had never looked at him like a he was a puzzle piece he didn't know how to place, the key to a door in a house he didn't own. He never looked at him like a valuable but confusingly useless  _ thing _ .

He'd never looked at Wade as a thing at all. 

"What's with the jeans, Immortan Nate? War Boys declare a casual Friday?"

Nate chuckles again, and the smile almost warms his eyes. "You always have something to bitch about, don't you?"

"Oh, I'm not complaining. Much easier to get access to your good bits without codpieces and chain mail in my way." Wade carefully sits up, half expecting to be held down. He's waiting for the rough stuff; it's coming. It's always coming. "I'm just confused since you're always wearing like, eight centuries late battle fashion, you know."

The hand that reaches for him is relaxed, and Wade's freeze in place is not telekinetically induced, it's simply the safest response his frazzled brain can think of in response to something that so often becomes painful. And yet when Nate cups his cheek, it's like he has no choice; he leans into the touch, feeling that tangle of emotion growing tighter and tighter in his chest.

"Maybe I just see no point in pretending you're a threat to me," he says, and Wade can't say for sure if that's meant to sting or not. "Maybe I'm feeling generous, interested in what you want."

It makes Wade want to howl, makes him want to bark with laughter he knows would come out sounding like screams. Nate, interested in what he wants. Talk about a day late, dollar short kind of a deal. 

He closes his eyes and burrows his face against Nate's palm, losing himself for a minute in the feel of it. It's easy, because this hand feels much the same as it did years and years ago, long before the rise of Apocalypse and the creation of War. Nate still smells earthy and faintly of soap, like he's just washed his hands, and it's easy, with his eyes closed, not meeting those cold and assessing eyes, to pretend he's somewhere else, a lifetime ago.

"If I say what I want, is this gonna be the kinda gag where you give me the opposite? Opposite Day? Careful what I wish for?"

There's the TK, but the grip isn't vicious, yet. It's just firm, making him turn his face back toward Nate, holding him until he opens his eyes, so he can watch that lone blue eye track over his face, blank white one glowing vibrantly. "Tell me what you want from me, Wade. Tell me what you need."

He needs a lot of things. Sunshine. Freedom. Someone who loves him as more than a tough toy he can't break even when he's in a pissy mood. He doesn't like this game, he doesn't know the rules except that if he says any of those things it'll just get him hurt. War isn't offering him freedom or a break or even a leash on which to run. 

"I want you," He says, and he hates it because it's true and it's not. He wants Nate, he wants the man who fought everything to prevent exactly this future. He wants Nate who always thought he knew what was best for everyone else, to the point that he was willing to manipulate them down to their very thoughts, willing to make Wade think he was being haunted in an attempt to make him be his friend again. He wants Nate who would fuck him languid and loving until Wade was squirming and desperate and couldn't remember how to talk, who could shut him up with a single burning look or with a touch, who he wanted to make proud of him. 

He wanted the Nate who once, only once, when he was supposed to be asleep and Nate was dragging on clothes so he could slip out and leave in the dead of night, had leaned in and kissed Wade's cheek and said, "Love you."

He wants him, and he's gone. All that's left is War. 

So he makes himself smile through the tears that threaten, the grief he can't explain and doesn't have time for, and he lifts himself up, feeling the telekinesis let him go so he can move freely, pushing up to loop his arms around perfect broad shoulders, eager in the way he's refused to let himself be for years now, and kisses the man who replaced the great love of his adult life.

"I need you to fuck me like none of this is real. That's what I need."

There's no love in the look Nate gives him, but there is a sort of amused fondness and smug pleasure. That, he thinks, is as close as he’s ever going to get, and the gaze is, at the very least, warm.

Nate lays him on his back, spread out on the mattress they both know is really super gross, and he takes his time, working Wade over like this is all new. Like he needs to be tender. He doesn’t shove Wade’s face in the nasty bed, he doesn’t manhandle him or tie him up or hold him by force. For the first time in a long time, he kisses Wade without teeth. There’s no blood, no screaming, no tears. 

It’s good, so good. Wade had forgotten how gentle Nate could be.

“My perfect pet,” he pants near the end, his face burrowed against Wade’s shoulder, lips working his skin. “My good, perfect pet, mine, mine.”

When they finish, Nate carries Wade into the shower, and they end up fucking there, too. It's a little like the old days, like Nate can't keep his hands off him, like they're both after something but neither knows what it is. Nate's kisses steal Wade's breath and his hands steal his words, leaving him gasping and drunk as he's pressed into the tile and fucked. It's not exactly merciless, more like desperate. The fingers curling around his throat, choking him easily as Nate rails him from behind, are familiar, almost a comfort at this point.

When Wade wakes up, he's in the bed again, alone. The whole exchange had been so surreal, so warm and gentle and good, that he isn't sure it wasn't a dream. He doesn't even know which option would be better. When all of them hurt, it's very difficult to pick just one.

In the kitchen, he finds fresh food, the big bag of spoiled crap he'd pushed into one corner gone and the fridge smelling fresh. There's a package of SnoBalls centered on the counter, the 'not intended for individual resale' kind. No note, nothing to cement that whatever the fuck that had been last night with Nate hadn't been a new low in the field of wishful dreaming. 

Was he so desperate that even in his dreams Nate would still look at him like a specimen on a slide? He wishes he could say with certainty one way or another, but honestly, it's impossible to say. 

He sits on the couch and watches television and eats his snack cakes, and he tries not to think too hard about the things that already have managed to stick.


	4. Chapter 4

Sometimes it's not about doing what we have to.

It's not even always about what we _want_ to do.

Sometimes it's just about _doing_. Kinetic motion, baby, sometimes we just have to _do_ something.

-*-

Nothing changes, except for in all the ways it does. For a while, Wade plays at trying to be good again. Nate’s visits are irregular, but, Wade's pretty sure, more frequent.

At least for a while they are. Frequent, increasingly rough, utterly unpredictable. Half the time Nate seems just as satisfied to watch him bleed as to watch him come.

But War is a busy man with important things to do, and Wade can't tolerate being locked inside some bullshit cage, whether it comes with all the free food and shitty basic cable he could want or not. He doesn't even know for sure what he's thinking of -- he wants _something_ , anything, and there's nothing for him in that cell. Part of him thinks of it like he's going out for a walk, maybe to poke around for a job; thinks of it, in other words, like he's living in another time, like it's perfectly normal to need to jimmy into an air vent and dislocate his own shoulder just leave home.

Part of him is very, _very_ aware that he's risking a good deal more than an easily reduced dislocation by doing this. Some part is even hoping to be caught, eager for the punishment, eager for the possibility that this time will be the last time for one reason or another.

He doesn't get far, but he gets far enough to have it really hit home, how different things are. How bad. There's an air of fear, even around the guys with the big weapons, War's compound obviously not a happy place for anyone. Nobody wants to be here, he thinks, not that that stops the guys with the big guns from shooting at him when he's spotted. Really, that makes it easier to kill them back, though it's hopeless. Hand-to-hand against energy bolt guns is an unfair fight no matter who you are, and Wade fights as best he can but it gets awful difficult when a particularly good shot destroys one of his arms just below the elbow.

Nobody but War is supposed to be allowed to touch him. Really, War doesn't want anyone else even looking at him. Wade is his special prize, his and his alone, but what else are the guys with big guns supposed to do with a regenerating mercenary? Someone shoots him in the head and he wakes up chained to his bed, Nate radiating fury from the doorway.

It's not pretty, what happens next. It's never pretty. It's blood and tears and screams and curses, it's Wade refusing to beg until there's no other words in the world left but 'please' and 'stop'. Wade blacks out, Wade _dies,_ but he always wakes up, and there's no warmth in War like this. His fury, for all its passion, is cold.

At some point, in more pain than Wade can really think through, he becomes aware of Nate just sitting beside him. He's curled in on himself, unchained but coated in blood. His chest hurts worse than the rest of him, he thinks maybe because Nate busted his ribs worse than usual.

"This was never what I wanted," Nate says, and his voice sounds strange and far away. He sounds so much more like the man Wade wants to be with, for a moment it's hard to focus on when and where they are. Is that armor grazing his flank, stroking in a some soothing, absent touch, or is it TO? "You were supposed to be the easy one."

There's a part of him in that moment that wants to apologize, and another part, equally, that wants to laugh. He's always been a pain in Nate's ass, a pain in everyone's ass. He was never easy, however willing he might have been to fall into bed with Nate back in his messiah days.

"Here," Nate says, and presses something to Wade's lips. A capsule, a pill. Wade swallows it without thinking, mind miles away, lost in a place where Nate never wanted to really hurt him, where the pain between them was always even-keel, where Nate would have killed himself before letting himself become the kind of guy who keeps his lovers locked up like pets. "This'll make things better again."

It sounds like a comfort, which is why Wade's sure, even as he's falling asleep again, that it's a threat.

When he comes to again, he feels worse than he has in a long time. His mind is sluggish and his limbs ache; his _bones_ hurt. The headache is a screaming migraine, breathing is painful, his guts burn and twist in a way that they do when the cancer flares up, a way he's usually able to ignore but --

He's barely able to scramble out of bed and into the on-suite before he vomits. It splatters across the floor even as he’s crumbling and scrambling to toilet. It hurts, every heaving shudder wracks him with another bolt of agony. There's tears tracking down his face as he hangs his head over the bowl, eyes closed, exhausted. It's only the low creak of the floor that warns him someone is with him, and he still jumps at the press of a cool hand pressing at the nape of his neck.

Naked, kneeling on the tile with one knee in the puddle of puke that had escaped before he could find the actual toilet, Wade trembles, trying not to take comfort in the touch of that hand. This is still War, he knows that, he _knows_ , but this pain, this is... he's been shoving the cancer-pain into the back of his head for so long because the healing factor makes it meaningless. Now it's all right up front, impossible to ignore, impossible to push away.

Gentle hands coax him to sit back. Nate flushes the toilet and grabs a towel to wipe Wade's face clean. He carries him back to the bed and all Wade can to is hold on to him, too tired, too hurt to do otherwise. He doesn't know what's wrong with him. He has the vague impression, at some point after Nate's climbed into the bed with him, of another pill pressed past his lips, a blessedly cool sip of water.

It takes two more days for him to fully understand. Two days where he thinks he's finally dying, the cancer finally beating the healing-factor; two more days of pain and puking and passing out clinging to the toilet. It's the most time War has ever spent with him at once, because as far as he can tell, he never leaves. He cleans Wade up and helps put his exhausted, sweating, weak body back to bed, props him up so he can swallow a few sips of water, broth, a pill now and then.

"Please, no more," he sobs, turning away from the pill pressed against his lips, trying to twist away. It's alarming to realize, but as outright suicidal as he's been for... god, for _years_ now, he doesn't want to die like this. "I'll be good, I swear, no more."

"Take it," Nate snarls, hand gripping Wade hard about the jaw and forcing his mouth open. Wade can't resist, he has no strength like this. He cries as he accepts the pill, bitter and slick as the gentle rub of Nate's thumb against his throat, encouraging him to swallow.

He thinks, slipping into unconsciousness again, that he'll die like this, weak and sweating, naked in a bed decorated with bondage gear. He'd always figured he'd go out violently.

One door, he figures, is as good as another.

Nate isn't there when he wakes up.

Neither are the pills.


	5. Chapter 5

It’s not about the end, it’s about the getting there. 

And we’re getting there, now.

-*-

Wade's never been good at making plans. As best as he can remember, that goes for his life before good ol' Weapon X and the royal befuckening of his brain, but then again, that could just be the befuckening talking. It doesn't really matter, he makes do with spontaneity most of the time.

Sometimes though, sometimes a man needs at least a scaffolding to climb out of a hole he's dug.  

It takes a while for ideas to form, most of the time, but there's always a spark. 

Nate nuzzling against his throat as he comes, hands clutching so hard against Wade's thighs that they should be black should not be the spark he's looking for. Wade strains against the chains holding him to the headboard, gasping and shuddering as Nate's teeth sink into his throat; shivers and sinks back against the mattress as the same spot is licked and nosed at. 

"What a shame," Nate growls as he sits back, wiping at his mouth. Wade tries not to notice the blood streaking the spit, and when he can't really not notice, works at not letting himself get hard over it again. Easier said than done with Nate looming over him and using that rumbling sex-voice on him. "You heal so fast."

Wade chuckles breathlessly. They'd had this conversation many times back in the old days. Pre and post divorce, long before the end of the world. Usually Wade was the one lamenting his healing factor. 

"Thought that was my big redeeming quality," he says, half-teasing. "That and the fact that I've got the libido of a bunny rabbit on ecstasy. Ugly but always dee-tee-eff."

The little noise Nate makes then, hungry and considering, like a big cat thinking about going after a second gazelle, spoil himself a little, he's earned it. It's a little scary, in a sexy way; makes Wade's dick twitch in spite of the way Nate leers. "I should've fucked you while you were being punished. If it weren't for all the puking..."

Not a turn on, not a turn on, bad dick, _BAD_.

He forces himself to laugh again as Nate finally sets about uncuffing his arms. His wrists are slick with blood but the chafing is almost immediately healed up after he's let loose. It takes longer for circulation to return to his fingers, and something occurs to him as he stares at his hands and flexes them against his chest. It occurs to him and his chest feels tight and his stomach feels sick and he knows he has to do this next part exactly right or it'll never work. 

It very well still might not.

"That is kinda disappointing," he says mildly. "I mean, obviously there's fun we can only have when the old healing factor is in ship shape, can't rip my guts open if I can't heal, et cetera et cetera and so on, but... god, I miss feeling a fuck the next day."

Big, rough fingers brush against his jaw, making him look up. He licks his lips because they're dry and because he likes, even now, the way Nate's eyes always zero in on that. Horny motherfucker. 

"You'd look good, covered in bruises and come," Nate growls, and drags Wade in to kiss him. Wade loops his arms around those shoulders and lets it happen, that sick tightness blossoming through his chest, shoving his lungs and heart out of the way to fill the space. "My good boy, all marked up for me."

He's hard again, but then again, so's Wade. Wade makes himself groan as he shudders, and it's not exactly an act. Part of him really does like the picture Nate's painting. Part of him is still reeling, telling him to be careful, oh so very careful. 

"God, the things we could get up to," Wade moans out as Nate savages his throat again, all teeth and tongue. "BDSM is always more fun when there's consequences."

A snarl of laughter, Nate's mouth sharp and bitter against Wade's. "What do you mean?"

Wade leans back, lets his expression say the 'are you kidding me' he doesn't quite dare voice. "Fuck my throat till I can't talk after. You could shut me up for  _ hours _ like that. Or you could fuck me till it hurts, till I'm all swollen and sore, and then you could fuck me one more time. Leave me a few deep marks to remember you by, least for a little while. How fucked up is it that I've got a better bad-guy-evil-bdsm-dom brain than you?"

He half expects Nate to get angry. It's so easy to make War pissy, and not always consistent in what does and doesn't work. He doesn't exactly know what to do with the look of considering interest Nate's giving him, so he leans back with his fingers digging into Nate's shoulders, worried he's pushing too hard, knowing he's asking for pain one way or another.

"You want that?"

Oh yeah, actually, this is perfect. He laughs. "I mean, if it didn't come with dying of every kind of cancer imaginable, fuck yeah. I like it rough, baby, you know that."

And Nate hums a little considering noise, and Wade decides that's enough of a seed sown -- frankly, he's not certain his heart can take any more of this even if it's not -- so he slides one hand between them and wraps his fingers around Nate's dick again. 

"Yeah, I think you like it too, huh big guy?" He purrs, shuffling so he can try and climb on top, nudging Nate to lay back. "Can't do the swelling thing, but if you wanna lemme take a ride we can see how many marks you can get on me before we're both all sticky."


	6. Chapter 6

Fear doesn’t stop the need to move forward. Obviously neither does disgust -- you’re still here, still following along. 

Sometimes you just gotta stick it out. 

-*-

Nate moves slower with it than Wade thought he would. The first couple of times he tries dosing Wade are disastrous; the pill takes effect within the first hour and Wade’s overwhelmed with nausea and pain. No one has any fun and Wade almost, very sincerely, thinks about crying off. 

He doesn’t want to die staring at his own vomit.

The patience with which Nate persists is shocking. It takes, not counting the initial punishment dosing, seven tries before they find a middle ground between Wade being rendered fragile for a few hours and Wade becoming suddenly deathly ill. It has to be weeks of time, maybe months, because War is no more a daily visitor than he’s ever been, and he doesn’t feel like playing that particular game every time. 

Wade doesn’t understand the science behind the pill, doesn’t care to. Something that stifles or blocks his healing factor for a while, until he metabolizes it out of his system. Earlier doses seemed to last a full twenty-four hours, leaving him gasping and dizzy with pain so sharp and all consuming he barely registered Nate there at all. By the fifth try, Nate's got the trick down to something that only keeps Wade’s healing factor down for ten or so hours, most of which he can devote to a little playtime.

Still, there’s a point near the end, starting around the eight hour mark, where he’s as sick as he thinks it’s possible to be, fragile and packed with glass. A little window each time, in which the possibility of this killing him remains very real, he thinks.

And whatever that pill is doing to him, it really works. If Nate cuts him after the first hour post-pill, the wound stays for the duration of the effect. Nate seems fascinated with bruising him, colouring him up all shades. There's a persistent underlying pain that builds, but it's easy to lose the baseline pain in the feeling of Nate's hands and Nate's teeth and Nate's telekinesis. Nate is better at restraint than Wade even now, and seems to understand Wade's limits better than Wade himself. 

Without the pill, Nate -- War -- is perfectly willing to rip into Wade, break him, leave him unconscious and unable to even drag himself to the shower for a few hours. But with the pill, and it’s strange, so strange, he takes his time. He cuts, but shallow, just enough to bring blood beading to the surface. Bruises are okay but nothing that breaks bone or tears anything important. He doesn’t seem to care that the healing factor will take care of any grave injuries later, and Wade waffles on whether that’s good or bad.

The worst of it is, Wade doesn't have to fake anything. War likes the edge of fear at the periphery of all Wade's reactions, and the enthusiasm that comes with it. Wade has always liked being dominated in bed, and having reminders like bruises and abrasions lingering along with the usual lesions and tumors is more than just novel. 

He's into it. He's into the way War seems to focus on him like this, into the way War pushes him. It's an old fantasy, Nate overpowering him, Nate hurting him in just the right ways, using all that power to overwhelm Wade. The way Nate can make him feel small and helpless the way no one else has ever managed gets him harder than anything.

And yeah, he's never going to be able to forget the sensation of doubling over to puke into the toilet while Nate's come is still running down his thigh. The feeling of Nate fucking his throat raw and then having to fight to keep his proverbial lunch down after because he really doesn't want to find out what it feels like to hurl with a bruised esophagus. He's never going to be able to forget the feeling of Nate digging his fingers into the flesh of his inner thighs, holding him spread open like he's trying to crack him like a wishbone, and the way his hips and groin had ached for hours afterward.

It's fun. It's terrible and frightening and so much of what Nate does and says should scare Wade more than it does, but for once they're on the same page. They're both getting what they want, or close enough that it doesn't matter. 

Once they really get into the swing of it, the pill becoming a more regular part of their time together, Nate starts bringing toys into the mix. Spreaders and flogs and sounding rods; anything he can use to toy with Wade and leave him sore and shaken afterward.

Sometimes Nate doesn't bring anything with him but his own self. No pills, no toys, just him and his seething rage and his need to hurt something that will still try to cuddle after. It's fine. Wade's not really thinking of anything as a plan so much as there being an option. Like any other suicide, it's just an option on the table. And like any other suicide, he only has one shot to get it right -- so he lets the half-formed idea simmer in the back of his head, and he enjoys Nate's renewed interest in him.

The whole world is crazy. There's no good or bad or right or wrong, there's just preferences people lean into. Anything can be moralized, Wade thinks, especially if you just elect to not think too hard about it. 

Which is a talent Wade's always had.

It's hard to want to be good for a world that never appreciated his efforts and has probably long forgotten him. He was never a real hero, and he was never  _ going _ to be one. Some days, laying around his apartment/cell/cage, it even feels like this all might be fine. He's living, isn't he? Isn't that all a guy can really hope for after the end of civilization as he knows it?

And he's got an option, hasn't he? 

That's more than some folks can boast. 


	7. Chapter 7

Popular wisdom says the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but that's not really all true. If that road is indeed paved at all, it's paved with the same self-serving pseudo-enlightened bullshit that leads people to say things like 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions'.

If everyone was really doing their best for the sake of doing their best -- if everyone was really acting on good intention -- then hell wouldn't factor in at all.

-*-

Wade often remembers bits and pieces of his dreams. Sometimes he remembers them so vividly that he thinks they happened in waking. This is less of a problem now, here, with him locked in an apartment in War's compound. For one thing, he rarely dreams of this place; he tends to dream of big-sky places, now, desperate for the outdoors he's rarely able to see anymore. Even when he  _ does _ dream of this place, it's not like he can act on whatever wacky shit his subconscious paints for him.

This dream he knows for a fact is a dream. For one thing, Nate is sitting by the window Wade doesn't actually have, holding a pack of the cigarettes he always hated to see Wade smoke. His hands are closed loosely over the little cellophane wrapped box, but Wade knows if he could see the label it would say Virginia Slims Menthol 100's. He liked the way they tasted, and the way the cigarette hung on his fingers, exactly the right length for drama. He remembers Nate, a million years ago it seems, plucking a half-smoked cigarette from his fingers and saying something about useless self-destructive behaviour before kissing him.

It helps, too, in reinforcing that this is a dream, that Nate keeps changing. One moment he's got a beard and his eyes are warm and sad. Then Wade blinks and he's clean cut and cold. Both versions are sitting in profile, staring out at a skyline Wade's fairly certain doesn't exist anymore. Some of those buildings had been different even before the end of the world. Definitely a throwback dream. 

When Nate speaks, his words are aimed at the buildings out window, rather than at Wade. It's hard to tell if he's talking to himself or if he's actually talking to Wade, because he won't  _ look _ at him. 

"I always liked coming here," Nate says. "Not just the city, this place. Your space. Chaotic but homey."

Looking around, Wade recognizes the space in the vague way he'd recognize any of his low rent toss-away apartments. Places that had been just his, with a chair broken in perfect for his ass, and a rickety little card table by the kitchenette because a house (or apartment) wasn't really home without a place to eat and dump junk mail. Most of his apartments had been in shitty parts of town and the view out that window should actually have been the brick of another tenement building. The perfect apartment, in Wade's opinion, was one no one was interested in breaking into. 

Moving through the dim room, toward the window, Wade tries to duck into Nate's space, tries to get him to look up. Nate doesn't even flinch, though the cellophane under his fingers crinkles as his grip tightens. 

"I suppose this is my fault."

Now he has his beard, looks right on the edge of tears. Now he's shaven and sounds bitter, lip curled as if the words taste bad. It's kind of freaky. Wade ends up sliding into the chair on the other side of the table, but he watches Nate, not the glitter of sunset on glass.

"You always gave me perspective," Nate says, and sighs. When he closes his eyes the glowy one shines through the thin skin of his eyelid. It's not something Wade's not noticed before, but every time feels special. Like he's really seeing Nate, what makes him him. Which is bullshit, Nate's always been more than the glowing eye or metal arm or the stern, 'I-expected-better' tone. "You were never afraid to tell me you thought I was wrong."

Every once and awhile, Nate's neither bearded nor icy. He's just the giant powerhouse Wade had never known how to feel looking at. He'd loved him, and he'd hated him, and he'd felt just about every damn emotion possible, looking at Nate. Sometimes at the same time. 

He finds that hasn't changed. He feels so many things he's still not sure what he's actually feeling. 

Sad. A lot of it is sad. 

Wade wants to make a joke, talk about taking advantage of the nice view to have some hot, up-against-the-window dream sex, but he can't seem to find his words. He just wants to listen to Nate talk.

Dream-Nate shakes his head, eyes closed again. "You're a clever man, Wade, in your way. Everyone underestimated you, but it was never just the healing factor that kept you alive. You knew how to time things. You just got hung up on other people's opinions."

When Nate finally looks at him, his expression is more tired than anything. Resigned and sad and so, so tired. Wade feels stuck, the way dreams make you stuck sometimes, like even if he managed to move it would be in slow motion. He can't say anything. 

The pack of cigarettes pressed into his hand is warm, and it crinkles when Nate folds his fingers over it. For some reason it feels like he's being handed the detonator to a bomb, something big enough to end them both, healing factor or no. 

"Stop worrying about what anyone else wants. Do what you need."

Wade wakes up before that ever-shifting dream man can kiss him. He wakes up confused and wanting a smoke, sighing at the bland ceiling. After a minute he nods and sits up, ready to start the day. 

"Well," he says to no one but himself, "we had a good run."


	8. Chapter 8

Horrible things happen in private spaces all the time, atrocities to which there are no witnesses but those committing the horror, and those acted upon.

Maybe that’s the point of stories like this. A window in a dark room made so we can bear witness.

-*-

Wade's felt a lot of jealousy in his life. Having often found himself on the outside looking in, at the bottom looking up, at the butt of the joke watching the world laugh, it was difficult to engender too many positive feelings for the world at large.

The jealousy he feels when Nate pets gently at his throat and watches him swallow the pill, eyes bright with attentive, eager fondness, is probably one of the weirder varieties, because he's jealous of himself. He's jealous of whatever part of him it is that makes Nate so eager to do this to him. He's jealous of the him that gets lost in being touched by these hands, who forgets about the difference between the pain and the pleasure. He's jealous of the parts that aren't complicated.

And, maybe, he's jealous of the him who doesn't have to do any of this anymore.

Nate pushes gently at his neck, encouraging him to lay back on the bed. He doesn't know if Nate would force the issue or not, and tends not to push too much anymore when the big guy elects to be gentle. Why fight it, why detract even a second from the hours of feel-good-time he's allotted?

"I like when you get like this," Nate says, pinning Wade to the bed. They're both still fully dressed, Nate's hips resting over Wade's where he’s straddling Wade. The jealousy starts to slip; he's the one Nate's looking at this way, he's the one Nate wants so bad he's willing to go a little stupid for it. "Compliant. So good for me."

Nate's shirt closed with a disgustingly complicated system of knotted cords slipped through loops instead of buttons, because the future sucked and no one made plastic buttons anymore. Wade elects to wrap his fingers in the fabric and yank Nate down for a kiss instead, grinning at the indignant noise he makes before biting at Wade's mouth. Quick enough, Nate's braced on his elbows, curled neatly over Wade and savaging him with kisses.

The times they use the pill seem to coincide with the days War is willing to put a little patience into the mix -- War likes to act as if he doesn't have a lot of time for leisurely make-outs and lingering touches.

Like this, though, he's willing to move slower, to take his time, let it build. Nate's always liked making Wade lose his fucking mind, in and out of bed, and this is just a new take on the old classic. Sometimes he'll drop little hints as to what he's got in mind to fill their time, because he likes watching Wade's nerves build, the anxious agitation all part of the fun. Honestly, Wade likes it too; Nate was never willing to make Wade feel small and scared before all this bullshit, and he likes it.

He hates it, but he loves it too, loves it like it's something he needs, loves it like it's a natural state of being to be helpless and at the mercy of someone so much more powerful. Loves hearing the praise, derisive or not, when Nate tells him he's being good, even if the words only come in tandem with pain.

He doesn't like to think of what exactly that all says about him. Not thinking is one of Wade's specialties.

"Oh, now I _know_ that's not a gun in your pocket," Wade breathes, palming Nate through faded denim. The end of the world still has faded bootcut blue jeans, because of course it does. Regular fucking button down shirts, no sir, but take away Levis? Absurd. Nate's chuckling against his neck and Wade doesn't know how much of that he's said out loud or if it really matters. "C'mon, get it _out_ , c'mon c'mon c'mon, I've been a _very_ good boy and I want my treat."

Nate's lips are soft against the wet mark he's worried into Wade's throat. He gets like that sometimes, thoughtful and slow; it usually means he's coming up with some variety of idea. Wade wishes the combination of Nate and bed and wicked ideas wasn't quite as sexy as it still is, because most of Nate's ideas these days involve a great deal of pain for Wade, but he is who he is and the concept is hitting all the right buttons, a fretful sort of arousal building in his lower gut even as he's trying to get past the trick of Nate's fly.

"I wanna choke on this big dick, come _on_ , don't pretend you're not just as eager to come down my throat as I am to swallow."

The thing about Nate that Wade had always enjoyed is that he wasn’t perfectly predictable. He had patterns and there were consistent threads to yank and buttons to push, but nothing was ever _guaranteed_ with him. That hadn’t changed with time; War could throw curve-balls just as well as Nate ever had.

Wade being this aggressively forward might have gotten him flipped over and his face shoved into the mattress, or it might have gotten a much rougher version of what he’d just said he wanted. Wade expects it to be some variation of one or the other because Nate may not be predictable, but he _did_ tend to stick to his narrative themes.

Being kissed again, sweet with just a hint of that need to bite, is really kind of out of left field. Nate’s eager hands shoving his shirt up to ruck under his arms, not clawing or clutching but just feeling him up like he’s something soft and sorely missed is unexpected.

Everybody has moods. War’s moods seemed to be grounded firmly in the angry/violent/coldly murderous realm, but maybe you can’t be that angry so much of the time if you don’t feel other things.

“You _have_ been being good, haven’t you,” Nate purrs, leaning back. Mostly, Wade thinks, so he can more pointedly press their hips together. Wade isn’t sure he’d be comfortable with the full 350 pounds of Nate’s bulk seated on his lap, but he’s also not sure he doesn’t want to try it. “You’ve been so obedient the last few months, maybe you have earned a treat.”

All Wade can think of suddenly is rectangles and squares. All squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares. With War, all treats are threats, but not all threats are treats, and it’s an absurd line of thought to coincide his mouth flooding with spit and his dick fattening up against Nate’s thigh, but here we are.

Nate’s hand is pressed against his chest, thumb sweeping idly over the swell of a hot, angry-looking lesion, the kind that looks fat with blood and ready to burst. There’s no way he can’t feel the way Wade’s heart rate shoots up at his words, at the sudden, visceral thought of Nate digging his thumb into that sore and working it into the pulpy meat.

That’s not a sexy thought, or it shouldn’t be. Wade figures he should be damn glad that Nate still can’t seem to read his mind even when his healing factor is temporarily inactive, because he’s not sure even he could, in practice, be into Nate fingerfucking a new hole into his chest. At least not when said hole isn’t going to heal immediately.

In theory though, well… he _did_ say fingerfucking…

He grins sharply, all teeth. “I _knew_ there was a reason I stuck around,” he purred, and let the moan building in his throat break from him when Nate scrapes a nail over his nipple, then squeezes on the curve of his pectoral like he’s trying to knead the meat soft.

“Watch the smart comments,” Nate says, so solemn it’s obviously meant to be some kind of evil cousin of a tease. “You’re all mine, and I’ve set aside today just for you, so you’re going to stay good for me, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” Wade breathes, arching into the touch, and god, but he sounds drunk with it already. Drunk is okay, drunk is good, because Nate starts to drop his guard when he thinks he’s got the advantage. “Yeah, so good, I’m gonna be good.”

Nate leans in and nuzzles against his throat, his teeth sharp and eager as he nips. “You’re gonna do everything I say, _just_ what I say?”

“ _Please_ , Nate, I said I would, I said…”

“Promise me, then,” Nate says, pulling away from biting at the edge of Wade’s jaw, his hand still working Wade’s chest like he’s trying to pull meat from bone without tearing the skin. “Promise me you’re going to do just what I say.”

And Wade does. God help him, he doesn’t even cross his fingers. “Promise, pinky swear, gonna be so good for you, just please…”

Nate chuckles, and it's not a kind sound. It's low and gravelly and laced with the same kind of threat that seems to slip into all of Nate's words and actions these days. It shouldn't be hot, none of this, objectively, should be anywhere near as hot as Wade finds it, but it is and Wade's long past being able to give that line of concern any real attention. It's more important, the way Nate's big, thick fingers are plucking at his nipple now, the way Nate's mouth fits against his own.

Strange, how kissing Nate still seems to make time stop. Wade can get lost in it, the idle way Nate touches, how he effortlessly dominates even this. There have been so many bad moments so similar to this, Nate overpowering him, kissing him like he owns him, feeding him the taste of his own blood. Somehow the threat of this becoming that, and at the same time the certainty that it won't, is intoxicating, breathtaking. It's a struggle not to buck up against the knee braced between his legs, but he's being good.

Nate didn't tell him he could, and he has to be good.

"I want you naked, Wade," Nate finally says, moving with unnatural ease for a guy that size to recline on the bed and watch, expectant. Wade needs a second, his heart still hammering, but he doesn't let himself wait long enough for it to seem like he's even thinking about being disobedient.

His shirt is already rucked up under his arms and doesn't drop that far when he hastily gets to his feet; he pulls it over his head and drops it on the floor, hooking his thumbs into the waistband of his pants, grinning when Nate laughs quietly. It's nice, like this -- not kind of, not almost, it's just _nice_ , because like this, Nate gives him some measure of agency.

War likes control, but like this he allows Wade to undress himself, leaves him unbound most of the time. It's as close to old times as Wade thinks he's going to get outside of dreams.

Trousers hitting the floor, Wade steps back toward the bed and feels a grip on his shoulders, pushing him back. "I said naked," Nate drawls. "That includes socks."

In a different time, Wade might have joked about sex being better with warm feet, or he might have pouted, or thrown himself at Nate anyway. He knows better than to try any of that, and so simply wobbles in place, pulling his socks off while standing and trying not to think about how stupid he looks with a hard dick bobbing in front of him while he hops on one foot.

When he steps forward again, there's that easy, tight grip of telekinesis on his shoulders, holding him in place and then slowly pushing him down. Distantly, as Wade sinks to his knees, he feels the first threads of pain uncoiling in his gut and at the back of his head, along the joint of skull and neck. The pill beginning to do its job, the cancer beginning to progress unhindered.

Kneeling a few paces away from the bed, he watches Nate watch him and keeps his his hands locked behind his back because he's pretty sure if he doesn't have them back there he's going to touch himself, and Nate hasn't told him he can. This is the safest option, especially when Nate moves to sit on the edge of the bed, popping the buttons on his fly easily and pulling his dick free, never breaking eye contact as he works his soft cock with loose, easy motions of his wrist. He touches himself like he has all the time in the world to play with his arousal, like Wade kneeling there hard and ready doesn't matter too that much at all.

"Come here," he says after a few moments of this. He doesn't need to tell Wade to crawl -- it's implicit by the situation but even if it weren't Wade probably would anyway. There's a part of him that loves the degradation. Nate's knees are spread invitingly wide and Wade settles between them, hands twitching with the urge to rest on those thick thighs. When a cool metal hand rests on his cheek he leans into it, letting himself be guided to Nate's thickening cock. "Open," he says, like Wade's not drooling for it, and then he pushes into Wade's mouth with a pleased, soft little noise.

He's not all the way hard yet. Wade's not entirely shocked and there are a number of jokes that occur to him about Nate's age and his decision to have Wade get naked in full light. He says none of them, closing his lips tight around the inches Nate's fed him and sucking a little.

"Get me hard, Wade. Yes, like that," Nate breathes, and if Wade closes his eyes he could be anywhere else, alone with Nate in some perfect moment. When War chooses to be gentle, it's harder to remember when and where he is, and really, Wade's not exactly eager to remember. When metal fingers press against the back of his bald head, he obediently leans in and swallows more of Nate, working his tongue along the heavy underside of that cock. "I know you want more, go ahead. Be greedy."

Wade can't help the thin little whine that leaves him, his own dick hard and starting to leak as he finally rests his hands on Nate's thighs and works his cock into his throat. Much harder to do when Nate's dick is only half hard, but that's a problem that's rapidly fading because he might be uglier than hell but he can still suck like a hoover when he wants.

And he does want. Of all the things he wants out of tonight, getting Nate off is pretty high on the list.

"Your mouth, hell," Nate groans, nudging Wade back down after he sucks noisily up the length, tonguing the foreskin. When Nate pushes gently at the back of his head, Wade relents immediately, swallowing him easily down again. Every bob of his head seems to get Nate harder, until he's hot and leaking and rock solid in Wade's mouth. Wade's fingers are digging into Nate's thighs, fighting to keep from grabbing his own dick and jerking himself off.

He's always been a multitasker at heart.

But he’s being good. He has to be good, it’s imperative. Nate said to take care of him, and if Wade blows his load now, without permission, the night will fall through, as Wade has more he wants to do. That want gives him exactly enough self control to combat his own hedonistic urges.

All at once, Nate surges to his feet, holding on to Wade's head in a vice grip. Instinct makes Wade tense up, ready to pull back, pull away, but Nate doesn't let up, using his leverage to grind Wade's nose against the tangle of grey pubic hair, humping forward like there's more to make Wade take. The urge to fight dies easy; the pain in the back of his head is growing, the bloom of fire low in his gut is spreading fingers from the core of him, lighting everything in a slow smolder. If he focuses on the discomfort, it even helps a little with his own maddening arousal.

So he makes himself boneless and compliant, sucking noisily as best he can while Nate fucks his face. He's little more than a sexual appliance like this, but given some of the shit Nate's done to him in recent memory, it's not bad. In fact, when he ping-pongs his focus from his discomfort to the way Nate's thick, leaking cock feels on his lips and tongue and battering his throat, it's actually really good.

He doesn't realize he's making that horrible whining noise until Nate's thumb is sweeping a soothing arc over his hollowed cheek and crooning a noise that's both sweet and patronizing. "I know you love it," Nate purrs, and he's not wrong, which is very rude. "You love being mine. Look at you, so good for me, throat stuffed full of my cock. You want my come?"

A stupid question, which Wade hopes is communicated well enough when he rolls his eyes, unable to help himself. He's lucky; Nate laughs but doesn't hit him for it.

A few hard strokes later, Wade's swallowing against the taste of Nate's load, gasping and panting as Nate sits heavily back down. Still clad in his nice shirt and jeans, though the jeans are soaked around the fly and crotch from come and Wade’s drool, Nate is still fully dressed, dick hanging wet and soft between his legs. Wade licks at the head on impulse and revels in Nate’s low, over-sensitive hiss, but he doesn’t fight when Nate pushes him to sit back on his heels, looking up at him.

“You think so loud, Wade,” he rumbles, smearing spit from the corner of Wade’s mouth. “I can’t read you, but I can still hear you. I know what you want.”

Maybe he does. Wade has no way of knowing, but War was always a few steps ahead of him before; maybe he _does_ know what Wade wants.

But Wade somehow doubts it. Because when War breathes all those hungry, possessive words into Wade’s skin as he fucks him, Wade thinks he’s being the most honest he can be. Sometimes he asks what Wade wants, sometimes he acts like keeping him content here matters to him somehow, but really, all that War cares about, insofar as he cares about Wade, is how he _owns him_.

He’d probably sound a lot less enthusiastic about giving Wade what he wants if he actually knew what that was.

Wade laughs, breathless, and his grin is as genuine as it ever is. Even a small secret, when it's all you've got, feels big, and Wade likes it, the certainty settling in his chest. "You always know," he says, cheeky even if his voice has been reduced to a rasp. "Too bad you blew your load down my throat already."

He laughs again when Nate smacks him, because there's barely any force in it and because he's smiling too. Nate's in a good mood today, and that puts a weird cocktail of emotion around the warm core of finality in Wade's chest; something guilty and something remorseful. He doesn't know if there's enough of Nate left to actually be sad if this works, and if War feels guilt over anything, Wade's never seen any sign of it.

War drags him bodily up onto the bed, his big hands hard and irresistible as he pushes Wade on his back again, looming over him for a moment, looking almost thoughtful. There's a thread of fear that draws tighter and tighter for a moment, choking, because Nate says he can't read Wade's thoughts even with the healing factor dulled or off, but what if he's been lying, what if he knows, what if this doesn't work, what if _this_ is forever --

"I love that look," War growls, moving away to work his shirt off, pushing it off his shoulders and letting it drop to the floor the second he's free of it. "That hungry fear, so eager. My perfect little slut, finally learning his place."

The noise that leaves Wade starts as a laugh and turns to a ragged moan as Nate grabs him and forces his legs to his chest in a sharp, painful push. He loves it, still, now, forever, the way Nate can move him around like he's nothing, all that power brought down to bear like Wade's important or something. Telekinesis holds him in place until Nate tells him to hold position.

Suddenly, the TK is gone and Wade's trembling to keep still as Nate licks a wet stripe over his balls, pushing his cock towards his own lips. Wade can barely breathe like this, wants to lift his hands to hold on to the backs of his knees at least, and then Nate shoves his hips down a little more, so the very tip of his dick is pressing at his lips. It hurts, he's dizzy, and he's pretty sure if he gets any harder it will actually kill him, and then Nate looks at him, brows drawn up, and says, "Well?" like Wade's missed his cue on something.

When he opens his mouth and sucks the tip of his own cock in, his eyes flutter closed. They've got a limited time to play with Wade's arousal; usually by the third hour mark the pain and rapidly metastasizing cancer robs him of the ability to get hard. Sometimes it takes longer, once or twice he's been overwhelmed by nausea and pain sooner.

It's easy to lose himself in the parts of this that feel good. The way even the pain twists into part of an overwhelmingly pleasant whole, like everything in the universe is centering for just a moment on Wade feeling good. Nate eats his ass like it's the main dish at one of those trendy here-today-gone-tomorrow pop-up restaurants; he eats him like he's been dying for it his whole life and will never get to again so he's got to make it count. Wade can't really get more than the first few inches of his erection in his mouth, but given the rest of the context, half a blowjob is plenty.

He's right on the very edge of coming in his own mouth when Nate pulls away and forces him back into an exhausted sprawl on the bed. Wade whines in instinctive protest, denied, and Nate gives him a dark smile. "I said you're _mine_ ," he rumbles, and then Wade's legs are spread wide, hips lifted, and Nate's got his mouth on him, swallowing him down. There's no halves about _that_ , there's absolutely no part-way here, no sir, and Wade hopes to god he's not expected to wait for Nate to say 'go' because faced with that, there's absolutely no helping it. Nate swallows meaningfully around Wade, and Wade _screams_ , fingers clenching into the bedding as he comes violently in Nate's mouth.

That's one of the nicer perks of this whole situation. He can be as noisy as Nate lets him be and no one slams on the wall from the next apartment or files a noise complaint with management. Wade lets his mouth run, a breathless, rough babble of praise, his throat still a little sore, and doesn't stop until Nate shoves a finger inside him, slick with cold lube.

"Cheating, oh, you cheater, you fucking," Wade pants, opening his eyes to watch Nate's smug face. "Gimme a minute to breathe, Jesus, you can't just... ahh, you can't expect..."

Nate's laugh is low, a rolling thunder sort of sound, as he works three fingers in suddenly. The difference between one and three is enough to shut Wade up, turning his words into gasping, pain-edged moans. "If god exists," he grinds out, meeting Wade's eyes, "then he made you specifically to take my cock. I can do whatever I like, because that's what you're here for, Wade."

Demeaning. Horrifically arrogant. Totally not the kind of thing that should make Wade want to get that bastard's dick in him right this second immediately, but then again, Wade's known for a long time he's not exactly the most rational in his responses to the things Nate says.

“Since when do you give a shit about _god_ ,” Wade wheezes, strangling the sheets, riding the razor’s edge between discomfort and mindblowingly good. “Did you confuse Murdock for your dad again? I can’t believe I have to tell you this, but your dad is the blind redhead with no ass and no law degree.”

This time when Nate hits him, there’s more force to it. A stinging telekinetic slap that stuns him into silence for a moment, the pain lingering, sinking in roots like it means to stay. There’s probably a nice bruise raised on his cheek, the surface stinging and hot when he absently presses his own fingers to it.

“That’s enough,” Nate says mildly. “Or should I gag you?”

Just like that Wade’s small again. It’s like breathing; inhale only to deflate. He gets comfortable with Nate, comfortable enough to forget what this is, and then suddenly Nate looks at him or touches him a certain way -- a painful way, usually -- and Wade doesn’t know how he could ever have forgotten.

He shuts up. What else is he supposed to do? He shuts up and Nate fucks him with his fingers until he manages to get himself hard again, and then he fucks him until Wade forgets he’s supposed to be quiet. Because, just like breathing, some cycles just keep going until you fuck up bad enough that they _have_ to stop.

Nate fucks Wade until they both come, and then he flips Wade to lay on his stomach, letting Wade rest for a little while, if you can call it resting when Nate won’t leave his ass alone. He ends up grabbing a pillow to bury his face in so he can smother all the whimpery, overstimulated noises that tear out of him as Nate eats him out again. He likes doing that to Wade, stringing him along for hours even when Wade can’t get hard anymore; he likes the way Wade yields like this, unable to be anything but willing.

It’s easy to lose track of time. For the most part, it all feels good. Too much, for some parts, but good. Nate fucks him again, slower, until Wade begs him to finish and Nate drags him up off the mattress, sitting on the bed and telling Wade to ride him, then, _make him come_.

The third time is more leisurely, the natural evolution of laying together and exchanging lazy kisses. They could be anyone, anywhere. It doesn’t have to be the end of the world, laying with Nate like that, Nate touching him careful. Even the fire under Wade’s skin and the ache in his skull aren’t that bad because Nate is just laying beside him with an arm slung over Wade’s side, holding him and kissing him.

Until he rolls him on his back again and reaches for the lube.

Wade wants to wake up. He wants to roll over and turn to Nate, or whoever the script is setting him up with this run -- hell, he'd even take waking up alone in an empty room. He just wants to wake up, wake up and laugh and say, “god, I had the weirdest dream.” Except Wade figured out a long time ago that he’s not the character who gets to wake up and laugh it off. His life is one please-be-a-nightmare after another, doesn’t matter who’s writing him. Even fucking fanfiction isn’t safe.

He wants to wake up but he can’t wake up because this is real. This is forever, and he wants out.

Writhing back against the pillows, fingers scraping desperately against Nate’s shoulders, he whines and cants his head back, spine a pretty curve to push him closer. An offering that could be taken too many ways or ignored entirely. It’s not a plan, it’s just an option he’s taking.

Nate’s grip is strong around his neck, fingers biting in, holding him back at an angle such that he can maintain rhythm with his hips while flexing and unflexing his fingers. Now Wade can breathe, now Wade can’t. Nate is in control, perfectly; he won't cut Wade's air off enough to do anything permanent.

So Wade twists and tries to wrap his fingers around that thick wrist, shoving.

“Don’t -- Nate, not -- please --”

He gets a longer squeeze, one that makes his whole head begin to pound. “We’re not playing that game, Wade,” Nate snarls, curling in to bear down on Wade. It hurts, it’s not enough. “You’re my good boy tonight, stop pretending this isn’t exactly what you’ve been begging for.”

The sound of Wade’s fist striking Nathan’s face was loud even with the noise of Nate fucking him. Louder than the squeak of the bed, louder than the slap of Nate’s hips meeting Wade’s ass, louder than Wade gasping for air. Nate’s hand relaxes just long enough for Wade to shove it away, coughing hoarsely. “Not -- playing -- sonnova -- bitch.”

For a moment, Wade's attempts to scramble away are met with no resistance, like Nate's so taken aback that he's not going to react at all. Wade manages to get his feet braced against the mattress, legs spread uncomfortably wide to either side of Nate as he tries to disengage their bodies. He makes it all the way to the headboard, still unable to really breathe properly, his abused throat burning every time he tries to draw in air or swallow.

It's not a plan. His struggle when Nate grabs hold of him again is perfectly real. There's a small spark of satisfaction when Wade sees the red mark on Nate's face, but that's very quickly overwhelmed by panic when he's slammed back into the metal bars of the headboard. He tries to shove Nate back and worm his way free, but Nate outweighs him by a fair amount and without the healing factor Wade's avenues of escape are far more limited. He can't break his arm to get free if it's going to be a weak point for the next several hours while his body metabolizes whatever the hell it is Nate's been dosing him with.

He finds, with Nate snarling over him, trying to drag one arm back to the restraints still dangling from the headboard, that things are actually a lot simpler than he'd expected. All this time he's been so full of conflict, what can he do, what should he do -- but push come to shove, he's just angry. Anger is easy; hot and violent and let him forget how bad everything hurts.

Nate twists one of Wade's arms up and to the side, clutching so hard on the wrist that Wade screams even as Nate's grappling for the cuff dangling on that side. His guts are on fire, nausea screaming through him as he tries to pull away, striking Nate again and again. It doesn't matter. Nate's furious, breathing heavy as Wade flails meaningfully in an attempt to at least make Nate's job harder.

Hand to hand, naked, no healing factor, Wade knows he's got no real hope of overpowering Nate. And Nate's still holding back, even when Wade manages to get a lucky kick in, driving his foot into Nate's core. He feels Nate's breathe wheeze out and is braced for it when he's backhanded, letting the momentum throw him to one side, Nate's grip on his wrist slackened enough for Wade to slip free.

Fingers scrabbling blindly over the little bedside table. The glass of water Nate had given him to take the pill with, half full, he throws blindly toward Nate's face, hears Nate curse and the glass batted aside to break against the far wall. there's gonna be glass everywhere. Not important, not important. Nate grabs him just below the elbow, a bruising grip that tears open several painful soft spots. _That’s_ important.

Wade's fingers skirt over the bedside lamp. He's being dragged away, it's slipping out of his grip; he panics. He manages to wrap his fingers round the cord, yanking it with him. It's a heavy metal base; the bulb inside shatters when it falls over. More glass on the floor, the bed is surrounded by broken glass now. Not important.

It's heavy in his hand. The base would be better, it's weighted. He knows exactly how and where he needs to hit to drop Nate, and he's almost certain Nate's so distracted trying to get Wade's other wrist locked in that leather cuff that he's not going to block a blow if Wade swings now.

He hits Nate across the face, hard enough to break the shade. If the bulb hadn't broken when the lamp fell over, it would have broken then.

There's a moment when they both seem to freeze, Nate letting Wade go to touch his own face, fingers smearing blood from a tear just under his eye. Then Wade moves to turn the lamp in his hands, thinking _can't do a sissy hit this time, this time it's for all the marbles_. His hands tighten on the neck of the lamp. Muscles tighten to put real force behind the blow.

Nate's eye flares.

Something hot burns through his head; something cold and wet and drooling down his neck and splattered behind him when he collapses backward, lamp falling from limp fingers. He knows this feeling. He knows all these feelings. Nate's oldest way of dealing with Wade when Wade's being more trouble than he's worth; most people need a loaded gun to manage it, but not Nate.

"Cheater," he gurgles, but he's smiling. He knows he is.

Because Nate's staring at him, and the look on his face -- God, Wade would frame it if he could. He almost doesn't want to close his eyes, because he's pretty sure he won't be opening them again. The usual itch of an active healing factor is nowhere to be found, and that wet splatter on the wall and running down his back is blood and brain matter and he can't barely get himself to breathe anymore and Nate looks _horrified_.

It's not perfect. Nothing in the world ever is. But for everything that's happened, for a close-out to the last few horrible years, it works.

Poetic, cinematic.

Whoever draws the comic, he really hopes the draw him managing to flip Nate the bird. Really, he can't even feel his fingers. And when he blinks at last, the darkness behind his eyes stretches into forever, and whatever Nate was trying to say as he leaned over Wade -- whatever curse or command or, god forbid, _apology_ was trying to dribble from the bastard's lips -- drowns in resounding, echoing silence.

Wade's died more times than he can count. It feels like a familiar vacation, most times, a little road trip of the soul, a brief calm interlude from the agony of his cancer riddled body. This time it's difference.

This time, it feels real.


End file.
